Editing Gettysburg Address (section)

===Hay copy===
[[File:Haycopy-1.jpg|thumb|[[John Hay]]'s copy of the address, including Lincoln's handwritten corrections]]
The Hay copy of the address{{Ref label|Hay|b|b}} was first announced to the public in 1906, following a search for the original manuscript of the address. It was found among the papers of [[John Hay]].<ref name="johnson"/> The Hay copy differs somewhat from the manuscript of the address described by Nicolay in his article, and includes several omissions and insertions made by Lincoln, including omissions critical to the basic meaning of the sentence, not simply words that would be added by Lincoln to strengthen or clarify their meaning.{{citation needed|date=April 2021}} In this copy of the address, like the Nicolay copy, the words "under God" are not present.

The Hay version has been described as "the most inexplicable" of the drafts and is sometimes referred to as the "second draft".<ref name="GA drafts"/><ref>David Mearns (1964). "Unknown at this Address", in ''Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address: Commemorative Papers'', ed. Allan Nevins. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, p. 133; Mearns and Dunlap, caption describing the facsimile of the Hay text in ''Long Remembered''; both cited in Johnson, "Who Stole the Gettysburg Address".</ref> The Hay copy was written by Lincoln either the morning before the event, or shortly after Lincoln's return to Washington, D.C.. Those who believe that it was completed the morning of his address point to the fact that it includes several phrases that are not present in the first draft, which do appear in media coverage of the address and in subsequent copies made by Lincoln. It is probable, they conclude, that, as the Library of Congress includes in an explanatory note accompanying the original copies of the first and second drafts, that this was the version that Lincoln read from when he delivered the address.<ref name="gnmp">{{cite web|publisher=United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service|title=Gettysburg National Military Park|url=http://publications.usa.gov/epublications/gettysburg/g2.htm|access-date=December 3, 2007|archive-date=March 6, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160306120405/http://publications.usa.gov/epublications/gettysburg/g2.htm|url-status=dead}}
Historical Handbook Number Nine 1954 (Revised 1962), at the Gettysburg National Military Park Historical Handbook website.</ref> Lincoln eventually gave this copy of the speech to Hay, whose descendants donated it and the Nicolay copy to the Library of Congress in 1916.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://myloc.gov/Exhibitions/gettysburgaddress/exhibitionitems/ExhibitObjects/HayDraft.aspx?sc_id=wikip |title=The Gettysburg Address Hay draft |access-date=September 15, 2010 |date=September 15, 2010 |publisher=[[Library of Congress]] |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120309141609/http://myloc.gov/Exhibitions/gettysburgaddress/exhibitionitems/ExhibitObjects/HayDraft.aspx?sc_id=wikip |archive-date=March 9, 2012  }}</ref>